


Two Steps Back

by Stakebait



Series: Taking Steps [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-11
Updated: 2010-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After tying up loose ends in LA, Wesley returns to Sunnydale High and confides his troubles to the new counselor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Steps Back

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Spoilers: Up through Deep Down (Angel 4.1) and Beneath You (Buffy 7.2), after which canon and I go our separate ways.  
> Dedication: For thebratqueen, who inspired the title and so much more, and for minim_calibre, who issued the challenge. Many thanks to Olwen and Wolfling for the beta read and putting up with all my questions!

  
The place looked old already, in that peculiar way that modern architecture always did, to his eyes: as inevitably obsolete as a new computer. Brushed steel and glass, but below them the same old cement block that served this ugly, jagged part of the world in place of brick. It didn't mellow as it aged. It was always the same, until it cracked. Wesley appreciated the irony in that.

The leather of his shoes made a sharp sound against the industrial tile of the corridors, and the worsted of his suit rubbed against his wrists at the cuffs. The collar of the starched white shirt – one might even call it stuffed, without stretching the point past breaking – rasped against the freshly shaved skin of his throat. It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to dress this way – since the parties he and Virginia used to attend. His face felt naked without its accustomed coating of stubble. At first the razor had reminded him of the point of a knife dragging and catching in his throat. And after, well, Lilah had liked the way it burned against her skin.

That was done, now, like so much else. Boxes checked, lines crossed. He hadn't left her a note. That wasn't their way, and in any case, he had no suitable words with which to begin or end it. Dear was no less laughable than love. He had left her a copy of Paradise Lost instead, lying on the coffee table of his empty apartment, since he had never seen her own. He doubted that she'd understand the reference. He wondered if she even remembered taunting him with a copy of Dante's Inferno. She was never one for dwelling in the past. But it was a first edition, and would make a fine parting gift.

There was nothing so refined, here. He'd had to follow the signs, since the library was not where he remembered, but the doors swung heavily on double hinges as they always had – perhaps it was some part of California's arcane fire code. The new shelves were bright metal, in place of wood, and the books were uniformly new and garish and, to Wesley's eyes, scanty indeed. The counter was curved and sported the cartoonish silhouette of a computer in a sea blue casing. There was no cage handy: he would have to hope that no further werewolves ran tame amongst the student body. But that was all right. He had done with cages. If anyone needed restraining, there were other ways.

Behind that, his office. Indisputably his, with Giles gone back to England and the Council. Once he would have felt the need, and the interest, to fill it with personal mementos that proclaimed him a gentleman of taste. Now he slipped a few photographs from a narrow pocket into the top drawer of the desk, and called his unpacking complete. Most were curling brown at the edges and old enough to remember his first arrival in Sunnydale. Of his time in the States, he had chosen to keep only a sneering Slayer with wine dark lips; a smiling child; and a redheaded woman, asleep, drool puddling grotesquely from her gag-stretched mouth. The other pictures he carried were not so easily put away.

Enough of that, more than enough. Wesley checked the clock: it was just time for his initial interview with the principal. A courtesy only, he was assured. A loud buzzer rang, and he found himself walking against the flow of traffic, if one could call this a flow. It was more like a calamity. But he discovered his newfound skill worked even on hardened teenagers: they got out of his way if he merely walked as though he hadn't a care for who might be in it. As he hadn't, it wasn't a difficult trick.

He turned the knob and entered. A heavyset, middle aged woman in cats' eye glasses urged him to a seat, Mr. Wood wouldn't be a moment, and hospitably offered him a hard candy. But before he had time to take either, another door opened and a tall black man, about his own age, stepped out of the inner office. He was looking over his shoulder, saying something to his companion, a young blond woman in a cream blouse and black skirt – "Buffy?"

"Wesley? What are you doing here?"

"I might ask you the same question. Is your sister in trouble already? I shouldn't be surprised, considering."

"You two know each other?" The principal looked back and forth between them.

"He – works for an old friend." Buffy explained after an awkward pause. She looked back at Wesley. "Is Angel alright? Do I need to –" she was already grabbing for her purse and coat from a nearby rack.

"He's fine." Wesley assured her, not quite accurately. He hadn't heard from Gunn and Fred since he'd dropped Angel off at the Hyperion. But then, that was scarcely surprising, since he'd left town that same night. However he had to assume they were capable of pouring blood down Angel's throat. If not, Angel was quite capable of taking it. In either case there was nothing useful for Buffy to do. Except kill Connor, perhaps, but if it came to that, Wesley would attend to the detail himself.

"Worked, I hope." The principal corrected, and off Buffy's look of confusion, explained. "Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is our new librarian." Turning to Wesley, he continued, "And no one is in trouble – unless Buffy's been handing out detentions again. Ms. Summers is our ... student liaison."

Buffy looked as though she'd been struck by a sudden thought. "Ooh, good title. Do I get business cards?"

Wood looked pained. "I did mention the budget? Even I only get one. I had it laminated."

Wesley belatedly realized they were joking one another. It had been a long time since he'd been at that sort of ease with anyone. It was also miles away from the relationship, such as it was, that he had enjoyed with Buffy. Perhaps she had finally overcome her resentment of authority. Or perhaps it was merely that when push came to shove, he hadn't the knack of making his employees trust him.

"And what, precisely, does a student liaison do?" He inquired.

"Talk to people. Be accessible because she's outside the -- " Wood gestured at himself – "normal chain of command."

"I'm sure she'll be excellent." Wesley couldn't have kept the snide note out of his voice if he'd tried, which he hadn't. Evading the chain of command might be called a skill of hers, but Buffy Summers, the single most self-centered girl of his acquaintance -- with the possible exception of Lilah, or Faith -- to be a sort of lay counselor to the disturbed youth of America? Oh yes, he was definitely back on the Hellmouth.

"Is there some sort of ... history, between you two, that will make it a problem to work together?" Wood raised an eyebrow.

"Oh no. No history. Not even any social studies." Buffy jumped in to assure him. Rather too quickly to be convincing, to Wesley's jaundiced eye, but Wood merely nodded and then gestured to him.

"Then come on in. We've got twenty minutes before Brian Kinney gets sent to the office for smoking in the locker room."

Wesley followed him into the office, wondering if the man were psychic. Surely, if so, the last place he'd take employment would be a high school or a Hellmouth?

"He does it every day, so he doesn't have to play softball," Wood explained.

"I'll take care of him," Buffy volunteered as she closed the door behind them. Wesley sat down in the chair indicated. Wood was already talking. Something about his green card and the benefits package. Wesley let the words wash over him. He'd known, when he came back to the scene of the first time he'd failed Angel, that ghosts of the past were inevitable. But he hadn't expected them to be on salary.

**************

Two weeks later

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (library@shs.ca.edu)  
From: Buffy Summers (bsummers@shs.ca.edu)  
Re: Lunch_

I'm sending you Steve Krapinski. He's getting picked on, all he really wants is to read a book and be left alone and I thought, hey, I hear libraries are good for that. I get to sign hall passes now, ah the awesome power. Don't give him a hard time about eating in there, okay? Wood said it was all good.

P.S. Don't stake the insane vampire in the basement. He has a soul.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: What?!?

What?!?

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
From: Buffy Summers  
Re: And you say I can't speak English._

Kid, book, lunch -- leave alone.

Vampire, basement, soul -- leave alone.

In other words, do nothing. I'm pretty sure you can handle it.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: Since when do you listen to me?

I realize you've always been somewhat casual about the requirements of secrecy imposed by your job, but really to send unsecured electronic mail through the office systems on such subjects seems unforgivably lax.

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
From: Buffy Summers  
Re: Since they pay me_

Am not. Casual about the dress code, yes. But I keep the kids' secrets when they ask me to. That's why they tell me more of them.

Oh, was that not the job you meant? 'Cause that's the only job I'm gonna talk about with you. You're not my watcher, fired guy. Twice fired guy, I guess, unless Angel sent you into deep librarian cover. Don't you get tired of trying to fill Giles' shoes?

And anyway everybody in this town either knows who I am or is in such deep denial I could wear a "Vampire Slayer" T-shirt and they'd just think it was a band. Actually, that'd be kind of cute.

You've got a lot to learn about what's unforgivable.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: you have an odd conception of your job description

I felt it incumbent upon me to say something, lord knows why. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Rid yourself of the suspicion that I care in the least whether you accept my advice or ignore and ridicule it as usual. It is, as they say, your funeral.

Three times, as it happens. It is unusual to be fired by one's subordinates, but I seem to have made it something of a specialty.

I was unaware that the board of education hired you to minister to insane vampires, or to enlist my sympathies on behalf of same.

And you'd be surprised.

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
From: Buffy Summers  
Re: I don't have a job description_

Been there, done that. Next time, cremation.

He's here, he needs help, I help him. That *is* the job. And you don't have sympathies.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: apparently you don't have a job either

At least not one which suffices to keep you too busy to write irrelevant emails. You don't know anything about me, and I suspect we would both prefer to keep it that way.

Have a care, Buffy. The soul may not help as much as you expect.

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Price  
From: Buffy Summers  
Re: I know enough_

I don't expect anything of him. I expect something of me.

You left Angel to die. You left Willow to die. And you expected me to do the same. Well news flash, Wes, not giving up is also the job.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: (no subject)

I came back.

_To: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
From: Buffy Summers  
Re: Re: (no subject)_

I know. What I don't know is why.

To: Buffy Summers  
From: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce  
Re: the world must be ending yet again

It appears we have something in common after all.

***************

It was 3:15, and the final bell had long since rung. The library was quiet – as, indeed, it always was. Students very seldom came unless they had a paper due, and never stayed long. But the quiet of an empty building was different, and Wesley had come to treasure it as the best part of his day. He enjoyed looking through the glass of closed doors to neat rows of untenanted desks, passing banks of sealed lockers. Muffled shouts from the athletic fields and the mumbled greetings of the occasional janitor were easy to ignore.

He straightened the last few papers on the counter, and glanced about to see that all was in order. It was. He might be no closer than ever to understanding why he'd come back here, out of all the places on earth that were neither LA nor England, but at least he was making a proper job of it. He reached to shut down the computer, and Buffy's last email caught his eye, bringing with it an unwelcome twinge of something uncomfortably like feeling. "I don't expect anything of him. I expect something of me."

It appeared they had more in common than ignorance. A wry, almost soundless laugh shook his chest. Gunn, Fred, even Lorne for all his supposed insight, hadn't understood as much. From the resounding silence he had to infer that Cordelia had ranged herself with the majority.

Lilah – had understood other parts of him, parts that even Fred, who had met them, had disbelieved. He had done his level best to make Lilah believe that was all there was left, so he supposed he oughtn't to blame her that she had. Particularly as she was trying so hard to believe that was all there was left of herself. That he had let her was one of their small, unspoken kindnesses.

Still, it felt good, better than he would have believed, to know that he wasn't the only one who felt this way. Even if the other was a girl as willfully ignorant as Buffy, who he'd never liked.

Possibly he owed her something for that, even if she didn't know it. And Wesley was meticulous about paying his debts.

Not a Watcher's care, certainly, but perhaps information. He had some that she needed, and was unlikely, given her lack of even rudimentary research skills, to obtain.

Another vampire with a soul, and a prophecy that named no names. The screen swam for a moment, and he seemed to see the words "The father will kill the son" shadowed across the pictograms of his inbox, as if they'd sat there too long and been burned into the monitor, or perhaps into his eyes.

He rubbed them, and the words disappeared. He must be tired. Wesley composed a short email reply, then deleted it unsent. It was far likelier that Shanshu applied to Angel, as they'd always assumed, and he had done enough harm there by trying to do what was right. Buffy might do as she liked – when had she ever done anything else? – but it would be irresponsible of him to put these details in so insecure a form, particularly with his name attached. Lilah might even be sentimental enough to set some of her hirelings on his trail, if she was under budget for the quarter, and Wolfram &amp; Hart's reach was long.

He switched the machine off, and stood. He would stop by Buffy's office on the way – home, he supposed, was the word he was looking for, though it lent a shabby motel room more dignity than it deserved.

**************

Wesley paused in front of the office door, his hand on the cool metal knob. There were voices from inside, and he was forced to admit how much he'd hoped that she would be long gone for the day, back to – whatever it was resurrected Slayers did with their free time. It would be too much to hope that the answer was 'slay'. He could have left her a note to come see him in the library at her convenience and met on his own ground, such as it was.

Failing that, he'd assumed she would be present and alone, and he could discharge his duty and be done with it. It hadn't occurred to him that she might be occupied.

"I can't tell my mom," he overheard a young girl's voice saying.

"Why not?" Buffy answered.

"'Cause she wouldn't believe me."

Buffy paused. "I get that," she replied, finally. "How much money do you need?"

"$200. There's no way I can get it in time."

"If I get you the money, can you work after school to pay it back?"

"You'd trust me to do that?"

"I know where to find you." Buffy answered, and the girl laughed a little.

"Yeah, I guess you do. So what would I be doing?"

"Construction." Buffy answered.

"You must be joking. I'd ruin my clothes, I'd break a nail, my friends would flip if they saw me."

Wesley rolled his eyes. The things young women thought were important. But Buffy was taking it seriously.

"That's why Lee made Press-On Nails, Levi made jeans, and some other guy made lockers. And do you really think your friends will recognize you in a hardhat?"

The girl was quiet for a minute. "What if I can't do it?"

Buffy's voice was soft, so Wesley could barely hear her. "You'll do what you have to. Trust me."

As motivational speeches go, it was hardly eloquent, but the sounds from inside indicated that girl found it sufficient, since she was thanking Buffy and gathering her things. Buffy told her to come back tomorrow and she would introduce her to the foreman – oh Lord, it was Xander Harris. Didn't anyone from this town leave?

The girl opened the door and exited the office. Wesley interposed himself before it could close. "Buffy? Do you have a moment?"

Buffy looked up from a desk crowded with papers. "Pretty much no."

Wesley turned to go.

Buffy made an impatient noise. "Oh, come in, Wes. Might as well get it over with."

Wesley toyed with the idea of going anyway. He didn't need this. Unfortunately, by the time he'd decided to do so, he found that he'd already entered and seated himself in the chair opposite hers.

She didn't even have walls, he noticed, only dividers that provided visual privacy. No wonder she stayed late to meet with students – they'd scarcely spill their petty problems where anyone could overhear.

"There's a prophecy you should know about," he began baldly. This wasn't a social call.

"Oh god, another one." For a moment, Buffy looked as tired as he felt. "Am I dying again? 'Cause I gotta say the novelty's worn off."

Wesley took a certain pleasure in correcting her. "This isn't about you."

He wondered why she winced, but decided he didn't care enough to ask. "This is about your ... project in the basement."

He suddenly had her full attention. Buffy's eyes locked on his. "What do you know about Spike? I told you to leave him alone."

Spike? The insane, putatively souled vampire in the school's basement was William the Bloody? Was he ever going to be free of Angel's past?

Wesley spoke wearily. "Nothing, save what I've read. But there is a prophecy concerning a vampire with a soul. We all assumed it meant Angel, he being the only such creature we were aware of. But now that there is another –" Wesley broke off and changed what he was going to say. "Prophecies are ... often misleading. It doesn't do to take too much for granted."

Buffy nodded. "Okay, so what's the deal? Apocalypse, big scary evil from below? 'Cause he's been dropping hints."

Wesley shook his head. "It's entirely possible, given our location, but this is more... personal. It says that he will live and then die."

Buffy looked blank. "Um, well yeah, don't we all? I get that it takes them a little longer, but if they were immortal for real I'd be out of work and we'd all be dinner."

Wesley momentarily wished Giles were here. At least they spoke a common language. "It doesn't mean he'll be staked, Buffy. It means... we believe it means the vampire in question will become human."

Buffy appeared to be at a loss for words for once. Wesley savored the sensation for the brief moment that it lasted.

"When?" she demanded. "How? Why?"

"I don't know. It is supposed to be the result of ... an atonement process, a second chance. It could easily take centuries."

Buffy blinked. "Spike could be human? Angel could be human? He never told me."

Wesley's voice was bitter. "Perhaps he thought it was for the best."

Buffy's voice was bitter too. That was new. Sarcastic, yes, as frequently as it was flippant and shallow, but he didn't remember such an adult ring to it. "He thought that a lot."

She stood and grabbed a jacket that hung from the back of her chair. Wesley recognized the outlines of a stake in the pocket. "I've got to –" she broke off, glancing back at him. "Thank you." she said. And then she was gone.

Wesley, sat, bemused, in her office for a moment, before he gathered himself to head home towards an expensive scotch and a cheap paperback. Or perhaps a stranger in his bed, if he could be bothered to collect one. She had thanked him. That was new, too.

*************

Two weeks later still

Wesley closed his journal with a snap. It had always been a professional, not a personal, record: conscious, always, of the audience weighing his words. As such the tone had varied with the imagined auditor: first his father, then his tutor. Next his superiors at the Council. That had lasted well into his days as rogue demon hunter – always hoping that the judgment of history might yet redeem him, if only as a figure of romance in some aspiring Watcher's thesis.

It was easy to tell, in retrospect, when he had ceased to picture any listener but Angel. For one thing, the entries had gotten much shorter, and he'd begun to define the technical terms. He drew a certain comfort from picturing the vampire consulting these notes long after he himself was dead, and finding perhaps the clue he needed for his own redemption, or only for a simple case on an ordinary day. It was a sop to his vanity to believe himself useful – and perhaps a way of bearing him company.

After – he'd left them behind. At least they might serve to justify his actions, to explain to Angel why he'd had no choice. Still hoping for the judgment of history, unwilling to accept that he already had it.

Since then they were mere compendiums of facts to keep track of: the date of Justine's capture, the feedings, the beatings, the square miles searched and catalogs of useless objects found, the days he fucked Lilah, the rare books sold off to finance his fishing expeditions, the demons killed. The eyes he imagined were prying, and it became a game to escape from them: a cipher in a dead demon language, one for each day of the week. Never the same one, of course. That would be sloppy.

He didn't think that Lilah had ever decoded his private notes – for one thing, he'd never found Justine missing or dead in his closet. For another, one day in the throes of a sentimental drunk he'd left her a letter amidst the detritus of his life, containing an offer he judged she would find difficult to ignore. She might refuse it, but she would come to collect her revenge for the humiliation of exposing her private business to the translators she employed – even though the only reason they'd see it was because she'd invaded his own. That sort of thing passed for logic with her, and either way, he won. But there had been no answer.

And then the final entries, in plain, if cryptic, English, because it just didn't matter any more: Angel found, returned. Left LA, October 6. Arrived Sunnydale, October 8. Saw Buffy. William the Bloody – Shanshu? That was all he had to show for a month in this place.

He'd attempted – again – to update it, but what, really, was the point? No eyes but his own would ever peruse these words. He wrote them out in the hope that they would get out, down onto the page where he could close the cover and keep them contained. Finished.

Except that it was he who was finished, while the story went on without him. Why he'd ever thought that might be a comfort to document he couldn't imagine, except that, like getting drunk, it was traditional. The whole exercise had been a triumph of optimism over experience, really, and who would have thought he still had that kicking about?

It wasn't an edifying story, and if the future Wesley had somehow managed to forget it, he for one had no desire to see that labor go in vain. Deliberately Wesley opened the book again, ripped out the last few, maudlin pages, set them alight and impassively watched them burn to ash, dropping them into a trash bin only when the flames licked at his fingers.

It was 10:15 in the morning and the library was empty. Too early, by far, to take a drink, but Wesley took one anyway, because he was long past caring what people thought of him. No one got close enough these days to smell his breath, and if they did, no one would question. Sunnydale High, as Principal Wood had said in his welcome, was a challenge. Wesley would put it differently. It was the beach where the washed up came to rest. Give or take one or two innocent newcomers and the inevitable idealists, if you had someplace better to go, you went. It was telling that Wesley was still here, with his youth and good first from Oxford, and he was not opposed to giving the curious an easy answer as to why. If it was one that social awkwardness would prevent them from raising in his presence, so much the better.

Wesley savored the tang of liquor in the back of his throat and, perhaps by process of association, found himself missing Lorne and Caritas quite desperately. Even the rush of humiliation that came with crooning something from the later Beach Boys' oeuvre was at least warm. He couldn't pretend he had any pressing psychic questions to attend to – except, perhaps, now what? And that was the sort of thing the green demon had never been willing to answer, even before Wesley had bashed him on the head.

It would be useless and undignified to chase the man to Las Vegas – he'd obviously fled LA for a reason, and Wesley doubted that it was the traffic or the smog. But he wondered if Lorne would still serve him, if the bar still stood, still listen to what little singing voice the blade had left him and offer the allusions and disconcerting nicknames that passed, with him, for advice.

He knew it was unfair even as he posed the question. Of course he would. He did the same for good and evil, demon and human, quick and dead. Perhaps without his accustomed smile or words of encouragement, but then, this wasn't a matter of friendship. Only professional etiquette, which was why Wesley could allow himself to miss it – the closest thing he'd had to a confessor or that quintessential American substitute, a shrink.

Wesley allowed himself a wintry smile at the thought. He had no use for absolution and no intention of healing away such an instructive set of scars. It was merely that the words kept piling up inside him like unpaid bills, and pushing them off onto the journal was no more than juggling the accounts. They had to be heard, and there was no one to hear them and that, Wesley told himself savagely, was that. He had made his bed right down to the hospital corners, and he would bloody well learn to lie in it.

Perhaps that was why he'd come back to a room full of readerless books.

It occurred to him that he did, in fact, know one more professional listener these days, however unlikely. The commute was negligible, and the humiliation, at least, took place before a smaller audience. Of course, he was hardly a student, but neither was he a vampire. And he was out of other places to go.

He rose and went to the computer, tapping out a brief email. "Buffy," it read, "I need your help. May I meet with you whenever it's convenient? Wesley." He hit send without rereading it. The dregs of the vodka sizzled on the still-hot tin of the wastebasket, and the bottle that followed made a hollow clanging sound that merged into the next class bell.

*********

This wasn't precisely what he'd meant by convenient, Wesley mused as he tightened his grip on the stake. He'd envisioned a luncheon meeting, perhaps, or a coffee after school, rather than an evening's traipse through the better graveyards of Sunnydale, trying to detail his problems in and around the disintegration of various vampires, several of whom felt impelled to comment.

However Buffy had explained to him that since she was trying to balance two jobs, her sister, and her Chosen status, she wasn't about to schedule around the pressing nothing he had on his plate. It was this or make an appointment and come air his issues during office hours.

He'd opted for patrol, vaguely surprised that she was still so conscientious about them now that Giles wasn't here to keep her nose to the grindstone. Even if it would give the Council fits to see her multitask. On reflection, Wesley rather hoped it had.

Wesley heard another growl and whirled. Two more vamps were crawling up out of their graves.

"Did you two, like, call each other up and plan that before you died?" Buffy asked as she punched one in the stomach, then swung around to kick the other. "'Cause I'd have gone for the matching outfits."

Wesley headed for the nearest.

"Stay back!" Buffy said in an annoyed voice, knocking the other into a gravestone, "I don't have time to babysit you."

She stuck a stake through its heart and turned to help, in spite of her words, but Wesley had already swept its feet out from under it, and now staked it through the back as it tried to scramble away.

"That won't be necessary." Wesley said crisply.

"Huh." Buffy looked him over – not impressed, per se, but at least appraising. "When did you learn to fight?"

Wesley thought back. "When Angel fired me, the first time," he answered after due consideration.

"How?"

"How did he fire me?" Wesley had come here to talk about precisely this sort of thing, but he still found the question somehow distasteful.

Buffy shook her head. "How'd you learn?"

Her breath, unlike Wesley's, had already returned to normal from the exertions of the struggle, but she retained a remnant of the delighted smile she wore during battle. Wesley wondered if she was even aware of it.

Wesley gave her a small grin in return. "By fighting."

He surprised a laugh out of her. "Good choice."

He fell in beside her again as they resumed their walk. The silence seemed slightly more companionable – a certain respect in the air, if not camaraderie. Or perhaps he was imagining things. In either case, he knew better than to expect it to last.

"So..." Buffy prompted him. "Darla came back human and Angel went obsesso-boy... you know this is a lot easier to keep track of when I know practically all the people. Usually at work I end up drawing a flow chart. So then what?"

**************

_Later that night_

"218?"

Buffy's clear voice carried amazingly well across the paved courtyard of the motel. It was late, and the old Wesley would have shushed her in embarrassment – or perhaps taken a perverse pride in this proof that he could bring a nubile young woman to his room. The new Wesley didn't care, of course, but it was striking that he'd even recalled his former state of mind. All of Justine's banging and screeching last June hadn't provoked a single such thought, even before he'd had the soundproofing installed. He supposed being back in Sunnydale again brought up old habits of mind.

"Indeed," he confirmed, catching up to her to offer the flimsy plastic key. The patrol completed, he had yet to progress further in the tale than Connor's birth – mostly because it had taken Buffy several repetitions to encompass the concept of Angel as a father. He'd had only the briefest of hesitations in inviting her back here, once she had acerbically pointed out that their other options at 1 a.m. were limited to a house full of sleeping Scoobies or Willie's Demon Blood 'n' Beer. Wesley felt briefly nostalgic for Los Angeles, where one could get papadums, spring rolls, and hot black coffee at any time.

Or stopping, of course. Stopping here, before the unbearable parts hung spoken and solid in the night air, was surely also an option. Wesley wasn't sure any more which way represented cowardice, but he knew he had begun this and he meant to see it through. It was almost, he sometimes thought, the only principle he had left.

Once inside, Wesley busied himself taking her coat, poured himself a drink and remembered to offer one to her, which she accepted. It was difficult to remember she was the same age as Cordelia, and a single mother now in all but name. She'd stayed a perpetual bratty sixteen, in his mind. He supposed he'd remained an ineffectual fop in hers.

Automatically he began to consider how best to exploit her underestimating him. He turned from the fake-mahogany credenza to find her sitting cross-legged on his bed. His lips tightened. He supposed it was a courtesy to leave him the sole chair, upholstered in repellant false tweed, but it still felt invasive. Presumptuous, even, though he supposed Buffy would stare at the idea that she might aspire to sex with him. The assumption that he was safe was in itself dismissive, but then Buffy, like Angel, was apt to trust her strength and forget that human opponents used tools, and plans.

Wesley took a warming sip of scotch, then slung off his suit jacket and tie and tossed them casually onto the vacant chair. He rolled up his sleeves, unbuttoned his collar, then gathered up his glass again and seated himself, too, on the bed, just a hair closer than was appropriate. He watched her scoot back against the pillows automatically, and smiled against the rim of the glass. If Wesley wanted her in his power now, she would be. The same plan that captured Justine would do, plus a few refinements to allow for magical allies and Slayer strength. Lord knew he'd planned how to capture Lilah, who had less strength but many more allies, often enough. She'd spit in his face and the sex would be incredible. But she'd try to kill him after, to control the blackmail potential, and that would be inconvenient.

Briefly Wesley was disgusted with himself. What had he become? Except, of course, that he knew the answer to that. The point was to get on with telling Buffy.

**************

_Later still_

The bottle was dangerously close to empty. Buffy's slight form concealed at least half its former contents, but it only showed in a certain intensity in her gaze and careful concentration in her movements, as if she was afraid anything she touched might break. Perhaps Slayer metabolisms burned alcohol more rapidly than other people, Wesley speculated.

Buffy was ticking things off on her fingers. "So... you had a really normal one who was good for you but the sparkage just fizzled, plus she couldn't really handle the night job even though she kinda came from there, right?"

Wesley nodded. Virginia, he'd heard, had become engaged to a man whose only magic lay in second guessing the stock market; he suspected they'd both be the happier for it.

Buffy nodded. "Me too. Riley Finn. Off in the jungles of – someplace jungly. With his wife, Mrs. Perfect Commando Girl. And you had the really, really bad for you one with the really good sex that made you feel awful after 'cause you didn't feel awful?"

Wesley took a moment to disentangle that sentence. "Roughly, yes."

Buffy closed her eyes for a minute, then opened them fast. "Me too. And then there was the crazy girl who you tried to break?"

Wesley didn't wince.

Buffy crinkled her nose in thought. "I don't think I had one of those. At least not in that order. And the redhead you did break?"

Wesley merely nodded. Buffy was the one who winced. "Yeah – me too, apparently. I didn't mean to."

Wesley looked at her curiously.

"Willow – I didn't get to this guy in time – he tried to kill me again and shot her girlfriend by mistake. She flipped out and tried to end the world and stuff. She's better now. Kind of. Still grieving, or maybe she just started."

"It was her sister," Wesley found himself explaining. "Vampires killed her twin. She set out to become some sort of killing machine and ended up being only a tool – first Holtz's, then Connor's, then mine."

Buffy cocked her head to look at him. "Tools are things. People aren't."

"They are when they forget their own humanity." Wesley wasn't speaking of Justine any more.

That, oddly, brought a little smile to play on Buffy's lips. "That's why sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to remind them." She reached a hand to rest over Wesley's heart. He froze.

"Don't you dare forgive me," he grated, with a voice like ice on stone.

Buffy flinched, then met his eyes. "I promise."

A little of the tension went out of Wesley. Which was terrifying, because then what would be left to hold him together? Stubbornness, he supposed. That's what had done the job so far.

Buffy looked like she was waiting for something that didn't come. "You won't break me," she finally said.

Wesley's voice was bitter. "I broke Angel. Don't be arrogant."

Buffy slapped his face. His cheek stung and he looked at her, startled. "I'm not being anything, except already broken." And she leaned in to kiss him.

Wesley was past being surprised. He dropped his glass to shatter or bounce on the thin carpet, and kissed her back, hard and punishing. Nothing about her blonde exterior or the deep soft ruffles at her throat and wrists suggested she would know how to play this game. But she met his edge and pushed back, pulling him down to her, her hands in his hair, and the words spilling from her lips were anything but innocent. The bones of her hips against his felt like they could cut.

Buffy rolled them over so she was on top, straddling him, then stopped, pulled free, and took out a cell phone. Wesley laughed. It was such a quintessentially Californian moment. He watched, bemused, as Buffy hit a few buttons.

"Xander? It's Buffy. Listen, could you stay over and watch Dawn? I'm not gonna be home tonight. No, no big bads. Put the axe away before you get fingerprints on it. Only an emergency of the ... dating variety. No, not a vampire. You wouldn't believe me."

Wesley's hand slid between her thighs, distracting her and trying to get her to betray herself with some tiny, unmistakable soft sound. "Buffy gave a soft sigh but didn't bat his hands away. "I covered for you when Anya caught you at the Bronze with that girl... thanks, you're the best. I'm making ribs tomorrow."

Buffy hung up and tossed the phone away. Wesley looked up at her with a mocking smile. "What makes you think you're staying the night?"

Lilah would have given some retort in kind, yet another volley in the ongoing game of onedownsmanship that they'd played. Buffy just smiled. "I'm stronger than you are."

After that there wasn't much to be said.

*************

_Sunnydale High School Library_

Buffy's body was lithe and firm and strong. Her muscles flexed again and Wesley groaned. His eyes flickered shut. He still wasn't sure if he liked what she'd become or not, but it hardly mattered. Being in her arms – under her hands – he felt how powerless he was. No amount of brain, no clever plan, no perfect aim would be enough to break him free of whatever she chose to do to him. And she chose – oh god – she chose this.

His heart was pounding. He could feel the bite of the table's edge in the palms of his hands as he gripped even harder, trying to make the moment last. Her mouth on his, her hot wetness wrapped around him, her teeth on his throat and all he could do was ride it out because all the choices were hers. This must be a taste of what it was like to be with...

"Angel," he whispered as he came, and he heard her crying out on top of him as if she were a long way away. But that couldn't be, because her hair brushed over his face and his closed eyelids like rain.

Wesley's eyes popped open. He knew with a cold certainty what he just said, and when – could still hear the echo of it in the room, which was restored to its true, anything but cozy dimensions, with himself exposed in the centre of it. He sat up, dislodging Buffy from where she lay curled up on his chest. He always forgot how small she was.

"I..." Wesley spread his hands helplessly. What could he possibly say to undo that moment, to mitigate it, make it something ordinary and unrevealing and not the humiliating admission that it was, that still, even still, Wesley felt – what he felt, for Angel. Not to mention that he'd had the colossal bad taste to entertain such fantasies while making – whatever it was they were making here – to Buffy. Who had given her blood, all of it, not just the dribble Wes had cut from his own arm, and risked her life to save him, while Wesley told her to concentrate on more important things.

"Its all right, Wes."

Wesley became aware that he was talking, a disjointed jumble of apologies and half-truths.

"Wes, it's all right," Buffy repeated, her hands soothing on the flushed skin of his cheeks. He felt a small start of surprise that she was still there, still touching him as if he hadn't just broken this moment past all reclaiming.

"I know. Hey, this is Buffy? I carried that torch so long I could have opened the Olympics all by myself." Buffy shifted her weight out of his lap and Wes stiffened, sure that now she would go, but she only seated herself and pulled him in against her chest, her arms cradling him.

A small part of him, the one that never seemed to stop thinking no matter how much he wanted it to, noticed the past tense and grieved for Angel. Although the way he'd been looking at Cordy, maybe he didn't care anymore. Still, this felt like a betrayal. Of Angel or Buffy, he wasn't sure, but he recognized the taste.

"Buffy, I want you to know. I didn't – I didn't want to because of – not only --" Dammit, Wesley thought he'd left that stuttering fool for dead in a hospital bed, where he belonged, breathing in harsh white cotton instead of air.

"Do you want me to tell you what it was like?"

Wesley's breath caught. He couldn't possibly have heard that right.

"What it was like?" he repeated lamely.

"To be with Angel. It was only the once, and it was a long time ago. I never really got to give Wills the play by play, what with the evil and all. But I still remember." She smiled and momentarily looked much younger. Wesley felt his cock twitch and half-harden again at that, and wondered what it said about him besides that he was a dirty old man. He felt old, at least. Lilah would have had a smug answer, but Lilah and all her sparring and defenses was gone. This strange new, far-too-knowing Buffy was here, and she was trailing her lips over his collarbone.

"I remember every kiss." Her fingers slid down his upper arm and over his chest. "Every touch." She ran her tongue into Wesley's ear. "Do you want me to tell you?" she breathed, and he shivered, and nodded. He couldn't have spoken the "yes" that clogged his throat, but fortunately that seemed to be enough for her.

She laid him down again on the broad expanse of the table. They had evolved an unspoken routine of sorts, meeting after the school closed once a week and going back to his room or, once, making it no further than his car in the parking lot. This was the first time they hadn't made it out the door. Wes spared a thought for security cameras and wondered if either of them would still be employed tomorrow. And then she began to touch him lightly, almost casually, as she spoke, and he ceased to care.

"I'd been so afraid he would have to leave. I still couldn't believe he was real and here with me. We were both wet and chilled, and I was shaking. He reached to help me out of my wet clothes – I think he really believed that's all he was doing. I wasn't letting myself think at all. I could only watch his hands move, and the curve of his lips in the shadows. And then he touched me, and it was like –"

"It was like fire."

Wesley started and turned his head to identify the new voice. It was hoarse and painful from disuse, the way Wesley's own could get these days, but it came from a man standing in the doorway. He wore black jeans and a black shirt, half opened, and against it his skin and his hair were luminously white.

"Spike!" Buffy said, and then she really was gone, twitching her skirt straight and scrambling into the shirt that lay flung over the back of a nearby chair.

Wesley fastened his pants and sat up, for the look of the thing, and because if he were going to die here he preferred not to cause his family any further embarrassment in the process. His shirt was past praying for, since Buffy had torn it off him, but he doubted the intruder had noticed. He wasn't even quite certain he had noticed Wesley at all. He was still speaking to Buffy, looking as if he were imploring her to understand something.

"It was like fire, and ice, and you ached with it. He looked at you like you were all there is in the world and you wanted to melt the skin between you, and tear it, and be one animal, growling, with one heartbeat. I remember."

Buffy was standing still, not looking at either of them. "I meant with Angel," she said, and her voice was hard.

"So did I."

Buffy did look up, surprised, at that, and met the vampire's eyes. "I didn't know you..."

"You knew me better than anyone. Better than him. Monster and man, death and... death. Blood will have blood, and no way out but through. You can't go back, and you two, making love to Banquo's Ghost," the vampire jerked a thumb at Wesley with what he judged to be a contemptuous expression, "don't have a clue. Something wicked. You shouldn't be here."

That last, Wesley thought, was meant for him, but he couldn't be sure.

"You shouldn't be here." That seemed to be directed to the air above their heads.

"I shouldn't be here." That was softer, desperate, almost begging.

"But you. You called me." That was to Buffy again. "You called me back. You called me _up_." Now the stranger's voice was brittle. "Did you think I wouldn't know? Did you think I wouldn't come?"

From the look the vampire gave Buffy, Wesley would have suspected a double entendre, if Spike weren't so obviously incapable of cramming even one reliable meaning into his words.

"I can't help it. You're in my blood. Have pity, love. Take him away from here."

"Do you deserve my pity?"

It was strange that the sharper her tone became, the more fragile Buffy looked. There were things here Wesley didn't understand.

But there were things he did. And so he stood, and stepped between them. "Pity is for people who don't deserve it," he said to Buffy. He could remember a time when it would never have occurred to him to include a vampire, souled or not, in "people," but that was a long time ago.

Buffy, after a long moment, nodded.

"Beneath you," Spike said to Buffy, conversationally. "It devours," he added, straight to Wesley, and then he was gone.

"He keeps saying that," Buffy explained. She was obviously shaken, but striving for whatever normalcy might be found in this situation – all the awkwardness of the morning after, with none of the practicalities to escape into. "I think it means something's coming. Kind of the Hellmouth equivalent of a save-the-date card?"

Wesley nodded as he pulled on his coat over bare skin and held the door for her with absent courtesy. He could think of several other things that devoured. Love, and need, and family. The good fight, and the Powers that just kept chewing people up and spitting them out. And, of course, Angel.

They were quiet as they walked out of the building. But somewhere between the office and the front door, Buffy slipped her hand into his.


End file.
